By Brad Brooks | SAO PAULO SAO PAULO A new prison uprising in Brazil early on Sunday left four dead, adding to the chaos in Brazil’s penitentiary system that has left almost 100 inmates killed in the past week in a gang war. The latest violence took place at the Desembargador Raimundo Vidal Pessoa jail in the center of the jungle city of Manaus, according to an […]
UAE, January 8, 2017 The UAE Government has announced that it has completed the legal system for venture capital funds as one of the first projects approved by the Government Accelerators initiative launched by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai in line with the goals of the UAE National Agenda. The legal system for venture capital […]
Last year was truly unforgettable. It is the year we celebrated Mara’s 20th anniversary and launched three new businesses: an infrastructure investment vehicle for Africa; an online jobs portal, Mara Jobs; and a last-mile delivery business, Mara Xpress. It is also the year we launched the inaugural Ashish J Thakkar Global Entrepreneurship Index 2016 to better understand entrepreneurial environments around the world. But perhaps what will stick […]
Photo A Marine patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2011. A new deployment of Marines will replace an Army unit stationed there. Credit Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images KABUL, Afghanistan — Approximately 300 United States Marines will return this spring to help fight a resurgent Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, the site of a yearslong bloody campaign, American officials in Afghanistan said on […]
BOUAKE The streets of Ivory Coast’s second-largest city Bouake were calm and the military presence was gone, residents said on Sunday, after a two-day soldiers’ mutiny calling for bonus pay and better living conditions took over the city. The mutiny began early on Friday when rogue soldiers seized Bouake. Soldiers at military camps in cities and towns across the country, including the commercial capital Abidjan, joined the […]
Hyperloop One global field operations senior vice president Nick Earle (L) and co-founders Rob Lloyd (C) and Josh Giegel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas US startup Hyperloop One disclosed a list of locations around the world vying to put near-supersonic rail transit system to the test. The startup company keen to revolutionize the way people and cargo travel said that 35 contenders remained from […]
ABU DHABI // Traffic was smooth in the capital on Sunday morning as hundreds of thousands of pupils returned to school after a three-week holiday. Abu Dhabi Police monitored roads around schools to improve traffic flow and reduce congestion and there were no reports of major road accidents. “Traffic was manageable and everything was under control,” Col Jamal Al Ameri, head of public relations at Abu Dhabi […]
The reputation of the main hospital in Iten was so bad that the only people who went there were those who wanted to “die quickly”, says Alex Tolgos, the county governor. But four years since Kenya started what the World Bank calls “one of the most rapid and ambitious devolution processes” on the planet, the hospital in the western Kenyan town has been transformed. More than half the […]
BAGHDAD A car bomb blast killed at least 12 people and wounded 50 others at a vegetable market in eastern Baghdad on Sunday, police and medical sources said. The explosion hit the mainly Shi’ite district of Jamila, the sources said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing. A series of attacks in the Iraqi capital and other cities in just over a week has […]
By Kwasi Kpodo | ACCRA ACCRA West African leaders are still pursuing mediation to ensure a peaceful transfer of power in Gambia where President Yahya Jammeh refused to accept defeat in an election last month, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Saturday. Sirleaf told reporters after a meeting among regional leaders in Ghana’s capital Accra that regional bloc ECOWAS did not yet intend to deploy its […]
Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, has held talks recently with one of China’s most politically-connected tycoons about a potential real-estate deal, raising fresh questions about conflicts of interest in the New York billionaire’s incoming administration. The 36-year old real estate developer, who is married to Ivanka Trump, met with Wu Xiahoui, chairman of Anbang, a privately owned Chinese conglomerate, as recently as November […]
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said on Saturday an agreement had been reached with Turkey over an Iraqi demand that Turkish forces withdraw from a town near Mosul in the north of the country, Iraqi state TV reported.Abadi met his Turkish counterpart Binali Yildirim in Baghdad. State television did not provide further details about the agreement over the town of Bashiqa, where Turkish forces have been […]
Oil started the first week of 2017 with a bang but ended it with a whimper, as the Opec fireworks that dominated the last quarter gave way to the more mundane reality of monitoring if the cartel will make good on its pledged cuts. Brent crude oil briefly touched an 18-month high above $58 a barrel on the first day of trading but there was little fresh […]
KFH Capital Investment Co, a subsidiary of Kuwait Finance House, has announced the acquisition of an office tower in New Jersey, US for $165 million. The building is fully rented by Panasonic Corporation of North America for a period of 15 years and is a significant centre for the company in terms of marketing, sales, services, research and development throughout North America, a statement said. Abdul-Aziz Nasser […]
By Jonathan Stempel The leader of a 2004 coup that toppled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and who had been wanted for more than a decade by U.S. authorities, was charged on Friday in the United States with engaging in drug trafficking and money laundering conspiracies. Guy Philippe, 48, faces a three-count indictment including conspiring to import cocaine into the United States, conspiring to launder money, and engaging […]
The amount of money making bets that US Treasuries will fall in value climbed to a new record high over the last week in a wager that faster US economic growth and higher inflation will weigh further on government bond prices. So-called “non-commercial” speculative positions selling the 10-year Treasury futures contract have been rising since the US presidential election and hit 816,156 contracts in the week to […]
Saudi Arabia is a historically entrepreneurial country. Jeddah has been a mercantile centre for centuries. Even Riyadh and the Holy Cities of Makkah and Madinah began as trading stations on the spice and silk trails. What has changed since the rise of the oil industry? Not the entrepreneurial spirit of the country but the institutional environment for entrepreneurship to flourish. As we contemplate the country’s future as […]
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: 5 January 2017 Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of news and information for professional markets and the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), will co-host the 11th MENA Regulatory Summit on February 5th & 6th in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Held under the patronage of the UAE Minister of Economy, H.E Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, the summit will debate key challenges that […]
With Formula One such big business in Abu Dhabi, it shouldn’t be any surprise that the country’s first go-kart-racing school has arrived in the capital. Hosted by Al Forsan International Sports Resort, wannabe future F1 racers can learn invaluable advice to improve technical skills and increase confidence at the school. It offers a single class or a bundle of four, teaching future drivers all they need to […]
AMMAN/BEIRUT A senior Syrian rebel official denied a report on Friday that a ceasefire had been reached between rebels and government forces in the Wadi Barada area near Damascus, where bombardments have knocked out the capital’s main water source. The government and allied fighters from the Lebanese group Hezbollah launched an attack two weeks ago to take back Wadi Barada where a spring provides supplies to four […]
WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump called the controversy over Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign a “political witchhunt” on Friday in an interview hours before he was to receive a U.S. intelligence briefing on the topic. “China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” Trump told the New York Times, referring to the Office of Personnel Management breach in 2014 and 2015. “How come nobody even talks […]
MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Health (DOH) reported yesterday a total of 630 fireworks-related injuries recorded during the New Year’s Eve revelry, which is 292 cases lower than the incidents in the previous year. “We would like to extend our gratitude for the support of other national agencies, the local governments, non-government organizations and the media for the anti-firecracker campaigns. We do hope that eventually we […]
As the first battery cells roll off the production line at Tesla’s 1.9m sq ft Gigafactory in Nevada a scramble is under way to secure supply of the lithium that is their key ingredient. This week a small Australian mining company sold a lithium prospect in west Africa to a Chinese buyer for $78m — or more than 2,000 times the amount it paid for the deposit […]
MOSCOW: Russia announced on Friday that it is withdrawing its aircraft carrier and some other Russian warships from the waters off Syria as the first step in a drawdown of its forces in the war-torn Mideast country.According to Russian General Staff chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier and accompanying ships are to be the first to leave.Gerasimov was quoted as saying by the state news […]
